


your heartbreak's not your own anymore

by Solanaceae



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, occurs immediately after 2x97, pre-slash??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23035135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: The worst part had not been the betrayal in the eyes of his friends, as he’d thought it would be. To die knowing they hated him would have been painful, but expected.But thekindness.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 9
Kudos: 228





	your heartbreak's not your own anymore

**Author's Note:**

> **trigger warnings:** suicidal ideation, partial drowning
> 
>  _with your sad-eyed doppelgänger you look just like  
>  your heartbreak's not your own anymore  
> i'll tell you that i love you, i'll scream it twice  
> you ask over the music, "did i hear that right?"  
> yes, i swear i told you in some past life_  
> \- little trouble, better oblivion community center

The railing of the ship is the only thing keeping Essek anchored: the uneven texture of it, the faint pain of splinters not quite breaking his skin when he grips it harder. His feet ache where they press against the deck, unused to standing for so long. Still, the skin of his face is uncomfortably hot, the cool night air sharp against his blood-flushed cheeks. 

_We’ve done nothing but show you kindness._

The sky feels more open, though he would be hard-pressed to find an actual difference between this sky and Rosohna’s. And the stars are different here. It’s a miniscule thing to be noticing at a time like this, but—all above him, a truth against the black. Like his body now, unprotected by glamour and bare to the Nicodranas air. If anyone saw him, an enemy to everyone, they would kill him without a second thought. 

_We’ve done nothing but—_

He would deserve it. 

The worst part had not been the betrayal in the eyes of his friends, as he’d thought it would be. To die knowing they hated him would have been painful, but expected. 

But the _kindness_. 

Jester’s hand in his. Caduceus’ low voice. Caleb taking his face in his hands, telling him— 

Essek takes a breath, lets it out as a slow rush of air between parted lips. Closes his eyes. Where Caleb had pressed a kiss to his forehead, he imagines he can feel a scar, an unhealed brand. Below, the sea laps gently against the hull of the ship. 

It takes so little effort to lean forward, the railing digging into his stomach. To shift gravity and allow his body to pitch forward into empty air. For a moment, he’s falling, eyes still closed, and his mind is wiped silent by the wind for the first time in months— 

The impact with the water is harder than he expected, driving the breath from his chest. Instinctively, he opens his eyes, and through the salt-sting he sees only whirling air bubbles. Cold water rushes down his throat, burning as it goes. Panic rises despite everything, and he thrashes as the weight of his robes drags him down, darkness taking the edges of his vision.

Something seizes his wrist with painful force and wrenches him upwards. He breaks the surface, waterlogged and half-drowned, and finds himself face-to-face with Caleb, whose hand is clenched around Essek’s wrist, keeping him afloat. 

Essek tries to pull away, but Caleb gestures sharply and he finds himself flung from the water, hurled onto the deck of the ship. He lands hard—could easily have cushioned his fall, but takes it. 

As he starts to sit up, Caleb rises over the railing himself, dripping with seawater, and reaches for Essek’s collar, hauling him to his feet with surprising strength. He slams Essek against the mast with his forearm braced against the drow’s chest, fingers clenched in the fabric of his shirt, breath ragged. When he speaks, his voice is a low growl. “What are you _doing_?”

Essek coughs, hands pressing weakly against Caleb’s shoulders in token resistance—not trying to push him away, but pretending he could if he wanted to. (He should want to.) 

“What are you doing,” Caleb repeats, quieter, but Essek can see that he knows. 

Essek chokes out past the last of the saltwater in his throat: “I told you. I do not—I am not redeemable.” 

“So you are going to cast yourself into the _sea_ ? Run from it all?” The saltwater trickling from Caleb’s hair and down his face could be tears. “We are offering you another chance to _live_ , not to—” He cuts himself off with a frustrated noise. 

“I want,” Essek starts, but there’s no way to finish that sentence that would make sense, that would make Caleb _see_. The human’s hair clings wet to his face, and Essek has this terrible urge to reach up and brush it aside. 

“What was your plan?” He hasn’t let up his pressure on Essek’s chest, keeping him pinned, fenced in. It should feel suffocating. Essek hates how it feels _safe_ instead. “What did you _think_ would happen?”

“I imagine,” Essek says, voice steady in a way everything else in him is not, “that if I was found out now, I would be taken outside of the radius of a beacon and executed. But if I die within the radius of a beacon, then I will return to it.”

“And when you are reborn and begin remembering? When you are a _child_ and you find that you still carry these—these memories of regret and betrayal, what then?”

Essek tries to pull away. Caleb grabs his chin, forces his face towards him. The human’s eyes burn hotter than that shade of blue should be able to. Essek bites his tongue until he tastes copper, the pain a bright flare in the numbness of everything else, and wishes more than anything that he were somewhere, _anywhere_ else.

“ _Tell me_ , Essek,” Caleb presses, insistent. “What does this do for you except delay the inevitable confrontation you must have with your guilt?”

Essek inhales, tasting salt in the back of his throat. “It is not the first time I have considered starting anew,” he whispers. “To at least have a second life to my name. I only did not because of the years that would be lost without memory. Ten, fifteen years of interruption to my work—it would not have been worth it.” 

“And now?”

“Now,” he says. Closes his eyes so he does not have to see Caleb’s face. “It is the expedient thing to do.”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Caleb snarls. “You are _running_ from this.” 

“Caleb,” he says, because he cannot say _friend_ , but the man’s name is as much of a thorn on his tongue. The shudder that runs through his body must be obvious from this close, because Caleb moves back just a little—not enough to break contact, but a lessening of pressure. 

Essek opens his eyes again, but looking at Caleb is too much, like sun off the sea. Unbearable. 

“Running will not solve anything.” Caleb’s voice twists bitter, just for a second. “Trust me. I know.” A long breath, then: “I do not wish for you to die, even if it would only be—temporary.”

All this time, Essek has expected—emptiness, disdain, a world turned against him. He can handle cruelty or anger. He does not know what to do with _love_. 

He opens his mouth, tries to tell Caleb to go, to _leave him_ , but instead the truth comes tumbling out, a wave he cannot stop, as much of a drowning as the sea below. “I do not want to _feel this_. I want to forget, even if only for a short time. And perhaps in fifteen years—” His voice cracks shamefully. He pushes through. “Perhaps I will have a conscience and a courage that I do not have now. Or at least I will be discovered by those who conduct my anamnesis and dealt with before I even fully recall what crimes I have done.”

Caleb hisses a sharp breath out between his teeth. Pulls away at last, and the night air rushes into the space between them, chill against Essek’s still-wet clothes. Caleb, too, is in the same formalwear, now half-ruined with water from jumping in the ocean after Essek. Essek has the ridiculous urge to apologize for that. He’ll just add it to the long list of things he’s done wrong tonight.

He takes Caleb’s hands in his own, and as handsome as the man is, his skin is weathered and scarred from more living than Essek has accomplished in the eighty-odd year headstart he had. For a moment, it’s only that—skin on skin. Caleb’s hands are so warm, despite the chill of the sea and the night air.

“What,” Caleb begins, but Essek brings their hands up, presses Caleb’s to his chest, just below where Essek’s collar dips to reveal dusk-dark skin. 

“You have a powerful mastery of the arcane,” he breathes, and now he cannot look away from Caleb’s eyes, bright as they burn, his voice shaking with an unspoken plea. “You could make it quick.” 

Caleb’s fingers clench, nails digging into Essek’s skin through the fabric of his robe. “You will not find satisfaction by burning it all down,” he whispers, and there’s a memory-heavy weight to his voice. He’s looking at Essek like he sees something else, something beside a miserable, cowardly traitor. It’s an inferno, it’s hopeful. It makes Essek’s breath catch in his throat. 

“I am not an innocent. I have caused the deaths of _thousands_.” The corner of his mouth curls, bitter. “You would not have to carry my death on your conscience. It would be justice.”

“Do you think we would not mourn our friend?”

“Your friend was a _lie_ ,” Essek snaps. “I was foolish, wishing for something I could never have after what I have done. I should have never allowed myself to—” The words stick in his throat. 

“To care? Is that what you cannot say?” He jabs a finger into Essek’s shoulder. “Well, you are, as they say, shit out of luck, because you _do_ care, and _we_ care for you, whether you believe it or not, and we have offered you a way to the light. If you choose to turn away and continue on your former path, then so be it, but I will _not_ allow you to flee entirely from this.”

There’s a growing tightness in Essek’s chest that radiates from where Caleb touches him. Yes, he _cares_ , and it is not a comfort. It is a wound he cannot escape.

“Allow yourself to feel this,” Caleb says, unbearably gentle. “You have been offered a chance. You may not get another.”

“I do not _deserve_ —” Love. Forgiveness. _Anything_ being offered by these people that he wishes he could call friends. 

“You have it regardless.” Caleb steps away. “You have it.” He sighs, glances over the railing. “If I turn my back on you, will you throw yourself into the sea again?”

Essek shakes his head and summons a tone of voice that falls just short of casual. “Not tonight.”

“Not tonight,” Caleb repeats, nodding. “That will do for now.” He hesitates, then touches the tips of his fingers to Essek’s cheek. “We take this one day at a time, ja?”

Essek nods.


End file.
